As handheld and other portables devices, such as cell phones, personal digital assistants, personal information devices, pagers, mp3 players, iPods, and the like, continue to evolve, the display has become an increasingly important part of the user experience. Indeed, the size and weight of these devices have dramatically decreased while the display pixel count has increased many-fold.
Realistically, the increase in pixel count is limited by the size of the handset. For a fixed display size, an increase in pixel count has to come with a reduction of pixel size, and dropping the pixel size below the resolving power of the human eye does not bring added value to the display. Thus, any further increase in display pixel count for cell phones will necessarily require the image size to increase.
Because of the continued increase in network bandwidth, processing power, and memory on handheld and other portable devices, a larger image size is desirable in order to make more information and application available on these devices. The desire for a larger image size necessitates the need to increase display size.
For the conventional, direct view display employed currently, the image size is equal to the size of the active area of the display. The size of the active area, in turn, determines the size of the overall mechanical size of the display module, assuming of course that the display cannot be bent or folded. Given the consumer's general desire to keep the handset size small, the display module size cannot get much larger.
Some conventional portable instruments have included alternative technologies for providing a large image size while keeping the display module small enough to fit in the handset. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,802,457, describes a portable instrument having an image projector module as a display alternative to a liquid crystal display device.
It may be desirable to provide a handheld or other portable device with a laser projector display module having its components arranged to minimize the size of the device while addressing other design issues, such as thermal management, electrical layout, and optical performance.